Rex Parker Does the NYT Crossword Puzzle: Anthony J. Caruso

Constructor: Anthony J. Caruso and Zhouqin Burnikel

Relative difficulty: Medium (normal Monday)

THEME: GO FETCH (39A: Dog command ... or a hint to the starts of the answers to the four starred clues) — things a dog can fetch:

Theme answers:

BALL OF FIRE (16A: *High-energy person, metaphorically)
BONE CHINA (10D: *Some fine porcelain)
STICK TO IT (33D: *"Don't quit now!")
PAPER TRAIL (63A: *Documentation leading to proof)

Word of the Day: BONE CHINA (10D) —

Bone china is a type of ceramic that is composed of bone ash, feldspathic material, and kaolin. It has been defined as "ware with a translucent body" containing a minimum of 30% of phosphate derived from animal bone and calculated calcium phosphate. Bone china is the strongest of the porcelain or china ceramics, having very high mechanical and physical strength and chip resistance, and is known for its high levels of whiteness and translucency. Its high strength allows it to be produced in thinner cross-sections than other types of porcelain. Like stoneware, it is vitrified, but is translucent due to differing mineral properties. (wikipedia)

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***HELLO, READERS AND FELLOW SOLVERS IN SYNDICATION*** (if it's mid-January 2023, that's you!) How is the new year treating you? Well, I hope. Me, uh, not great so far (COVID, you know), but I'm 95% better, and was never terribly sick to begin with, so I have every reason to believe things will turn around for me shortly, thank God (and vaccines). Anyway, it's early January, which means it's time once again for my annual week-long pitch for financial contributions to the blog. Every year I ask readers to consider what the blog is worth to them on an annual basis and give accordingly. I'm not sure what to say about this past year. This will sound weird, or melodramatic—or maybe it won't—but every time I try to write about 2022, all I can think is "well, my cat died." She (Olive) died this past October, very young, of a stupid congenital heart problem that we just couldn't fix (thank you all for your kind words of condolence, by the way). I'm looking at the photo I used for last year's fundraising pitch, and it's a picture of me sitting at my desk (this desk, the one I'm typing at right now, the one I write at every day) with Olive sitting on my shoulder, staring at me, and making me laugh. It's a joyous picture. Here, I'm just gonna post it again:

I love the photo both because you can tell how goofy she is, and how goofy she made me. Her loss hurt for the obvious reasons, but also because she was so much a part of my daily routine, my daily rhythms and rituals. She was everyday. Quotidian. Just ... on me, near me, being a weirdo, especially in the (very) early mornings when I was writing this blog. She took me out of myself. She also made me aware of how much the quotidian matters, how daily rituals break up and organize the day, mark time, ground you. They're easy to trivialize, these rituals, precisely because they *aren't* special. Feed the cats again, make the coffee again, solve the crossword again, etc. But losing Olive made me reevaluate the daily, the quotidian, the apparently trivial. In a fundamental way, those small daily things *are* life. No one day is so important, or so different from the others, but cumulatively, they add up, and through the days upon days you develop a practice—a practice of love, care, and attention given to the things that matter. If you're reading this, then crossword puzzles are undoubtedly an important ritual for you, just as writing about crosswords for you all is an important ritual for me. It gives me so much. I hope that even at my most critical, my genuine love for crosswords—for the way my brain lights up on crosswords—comes through. I also hope that the blog brings you entertainment, insight, laughter ... even (especially) if you disagree with me much (most? all?) of the time.

[man, I really wear the hell
out of this red fleece...]

The blog began years ago as an experiment in treating the ephemeral—the here-today, gone-tomorrow—like it really mattered. I wanted to stop and look at this 15x15 (or 21x21 thing) and take it seriously, listen to it, see what it was trying to do, think about what I liked or didn't like about it. In short, I gave the puzzle my time and attention. And I continue to do that, every day (Every! Day!). And it is work. A lot of work. Asking for money once a year (and only once a year) is an acknowledgment of that fact. There is nothing to subscribe to here ... no Substack or Kickstarter or Patreon ... and there are no ads, ever. I prefer to keep financial matters simple and direct. I have no "hustle" in me beyond putting my ass in this chair every morning and writing.

How much should you give? Whatever you think the blog is worth to you on a yearly basis. Whatever that amount is is fantastic. Some people refuse to pay for what they can get for free. Others just don't have money to spare. All are welcome to read the blog—the site will always be open and free. But if you are able to express your appreciation monetarily, here are three options. First, a Paypal button (which you can also find in the blog sidebar):
Second, a mailing address (checks should be made out to "Rex Parker"):

Rex Parker c/o Michael Sharp
54 Matthews St
Binghamton, NY 13905

The third, increasingly popular option is Venmo; if that's your preferred way of moving money around, my handle is @MichaelDavidSharp (the last four digits of my phone are 4878, in case Venmo asks you, which I guess it does sometimes, when it's not trying to push crypto on you, what the hell?!)

All Paypal contributions will be gratefully acknowledged by email. All snail mail contributions will be gratefully acknowledged with hand-written postcards. I. Love. Snail Mail. I love seeing your gorgeous handwriting and then sending you my awful handwriting. It's all so wonderful. My daughter (Ella Egan) has designed a cat-related thank-you postcard for 2023, just as she has for the past two years, but this year, there's a bonus. Because this year ... the postcard is also a crossword puzzle! Yes, I made a little 9x9 blog-themed crossword puzzle for you all. It's light and goofy and I hope you enjoy it. It looks like this (clues blurred for your protection):

I had fun making this puzzle (thanks to Rachel Fabi and Neville Fogarty for proofing it for me!). For non-snail-mailers who want to solve the puzzle, don't worry: I'll make the puzzle available for everyone some time next month. Please note: I don't keep a "mailing list" and don't share my contributor info with anyone. And if you give by snail mail and (for some reason) don't want a thank-you card, just indicate "NO CARD." Again, as ever, I'm so grateful for your readership and support. Now on to today's puzzle...

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Pretty dull example of an old-fashioned theme. It's true that each of the fetched items have been clued as unfetched items (i.e. this STICK is not a fetched STICK, this PAPER is not a fetched (news) PAPER, etc.), but that's pretty standard. There's nothing here you couldn't have seen 20+ years ago, except maybe EMOPOP, which is maybe the worst thing in the grid, since the word is just EMO, they call it EMO, just EMO. Crosswordese abounds (IBIS TAT ALOE ALBA I haven't even left the SW corner but you get the idea). It's not that the puzzle is terribly made, it's just ... hard to find anything positive to say about it. Frankly, it's hard to find anything to say about it—it's about as drab a piece of work as I've seen in a while. I've seen puzzles I really disliked that had more imagination and ambition than this one. I love a simple, snappy theme, but this isn't that. It's a tired first-worder. I couldn't even find a very interesting word to be Word of the Day today, so you're stuck with BONE CHINA, sorry. A BALL OF FIRE, this isn't. Speaking of BALL OF FIRE, have you seen it? The 1941 Howard Hawks movie with Barbara Stanwyck as a showgirl hiding out from the mob in a big house with fuddy-duddy lexicographers (including Gary Cooper)? Yes? No? Well, if no, you should fix that. It's in the Criterion Channel's "Screwball Comedy" collection this month. Yes sir, Barbara Stanwyck and Gary Cooper, a can't-lose combination. (This is how I amuse myself when the puzzle does nothing for me—remembering great movies).

Speaking of screwball comedies currently showing on the Criterion Channel—I just (re-)watched Easy Living (1937), which opens with cranky steel magnate Edward Arnold throwing his wife's extremely expensive fur coat from the top of his Manhattan home onto the street below, where it lands on the head of poor Jean Arthur as she passes by on a double-decker bus. When she looks around to see What The Hell just happened, the man seated behind her looks at her intently and says, in a rather ominous voice: "KISMET"! (50A: Fate). And yes, kismet, fate, that fur coat drives the whole damn case-of-mistaken-identity plot, complete with misunderstanding after misunderstanding after misunderstanding, and two big dogs, and Ray Milland and even a crossword puzzle—you think I'm kidding? Look:

Again, highly recommended. OK, yes, the puzzle. Uh ... I bought a portable cassette / CD player literally just today (to replace my old one, which is still sitting here on my home desktop, broken), so to the clue on CDS I say "obsolescent, shmobsolescent"! (31A: Obsolescent music purchases, in brief). Not much trouble solving this one today, but it didn't feel any easier than Mondays usually feel. I don't think CABINs are by definition "cozy," so I had an unusual amount of hesitation straight out of the gate (1A: Cozy home in the woods). I thought the dice were CUBED as opposed to CUBIC (1D: Shaped like dice). I had CHINA and kept wanting it to be FINE CHINA despite the fact that "fine" was right there in the clue and therefore obviously off-limits for the answer. I had the BEA- at 23D: Snoopy and Gromit, for two and, well, I confess I did not know Gromit was a beagle, so I could only imagine some kind of BEASTS, BEASTIES, something like that. I am now very much out of things to say about this puzzle. Hope you found much more to enjoy about it than I did. I'll be away for a few days while I relocate myself to the other side of the globe. But you'll be in good hands. See you soon.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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